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EULOGY 



OM THB 



LIFE AND C H A li A C T E R 



OF 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 



DELIVERED AT THB BHejUEST 07 THK 



LEGISIATUEE OF MASSACHUSETTS, 



IN FANEUIL HALL, 



" Sgo Tero te, aum Tit« flore turn mortis opportuuitate, divino eonsilio tb ortum et eztinc- 
tum M8» arbitror." Ciobbo db Obat. III. 4. 



BY EDWARD EVERETT. 



S BOSTON: 

BUTTON AND WENTWOKTH, STATE PRINTERS, 
Ko. 8 7, Congresi Street. 

1848. 



/ 



A 

EULOGY 

ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 

OF 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 

DELIVERED AT THE REQUEST 

OF THE LEGISLATUEE OF MASSACHUSETTS, 

IN PANEUIL HALL, 

APRIL 15, 184:8. 



" Ego Tero te, cum vitae flore turn mortis opportunitate, divino consilio et ortum et 
extinctum esse arbitror." Cicero de Orat. III. 4. 



BY EDWARD EVERETT. 
^ BOSTON: 



DUTTON AND WENTWORTH, STATE PRINTERS, 
No. 37, Congress Street. 

1848. 



n> 



SENATE CHAMBER, APEtt 17, 1848. 
Hon. Edward Everett, 

Dear Sir : 

The undersigned, a Committee appointed for the purpose, have the honor to transmit to 
you the enclosed Order, adopted unanimously in both branches of the Legislature. 

In communicating this Order, and expressing our hope that you will comply with the 

request therein contained, the Committee pray you to accept the assurance of their personal 

respect and most affectionate regard. 

JOS. T. BUCKINGHAM, 

JAMES C. DOANE, 

JOHN C. GRAY, 

EZRA WILKINSON, 

DANIEL N. DEWEY. 



COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

In Senate, April 17, 1848. 

Obdeked, That Messrs. Buckingham and Doane, with such as the House may join, be a 

Committee to tender the thanks of the Legislature to the Hon. Edward Everett, for the 

appropriate and eloquent Eulogy on John Quincy Adams, delivered by him on the fifteenth 

April, instant, at the request of the two branches of the Legislature, and to request a copy 

thereof for publication. 

Sent down for concurrence. 

CHAS. CALHOUN, Clerk. 

House op Representatives, April 17, 1848. 

Concurred, and the House join, on their part, Messrs. Gray, of Boston, Wilkinson, of 

Dedham, and Dewet, of WiUiamstown. 

CHAS. W. STOREY, CUtk. 



CAMBRIDGE, 17th Aprii, 1848. 
Gentlemen, 

I have received your letter of this day, enclosing to me an Order of the Legislature, 

requesting a copy of my Eulogy, on the late President Adams, for publication. I hasten to 

comply with the request of the two Houses, and feel myself much honored by this mark of 

their approbation. 

Be pleased to accept my thanks for the kind expressions of personal regard contained in 

your letter, and permit me to subscribe myself, Gentlemen, 

With the highest respect. 

Your obliged fellow-citizen, 

EDWARD EVERETT. 

Messrs. Jos. T. Buckingham, 

James C. Doane, 

John C. Gray, 

Ezra Wilkinson, 

Daniel N. Dewey, Committee. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



A CONSIDERABLE lesemblance will be perceived, in the 
narrative part, between the following Eulogy and other 
discourses of the same description, which have been pub- 
lished since President Adams's decease. This similarity 
arises from the fact that the biographical portion of all 
these performances, (as far as I am aware,) has for the 
most part been derived, directly or indirectly, from a 
common source, viz., the memoir prepared for the Na- 
tional Portrait Gallery, in 1839, by Rev. C. W. Upham, 
of Salem. That memoir was drawn up from authentic 
sources, and is the principal authority for the biographical 
notices contained in the following pages. It has, however, 
been in my power to extend some of the details, and to 
add others wholly new, from materials kindly furnished 
to me by Mr. Charles Francis Adams, from the papers 
of his honored father. A few facts have been given 
from personal recollection, and this number could have 
been greatly increased, had the nature of the occasion ren- 
dered it proper to enlarge upon the subject of Mr. Adams's 
administration, during the whole of which, as a member 
of Congress possessing his confidence, and for the last half 
of his administration as chairman of the committee of 
foreign affairs, I had occasion to be in constant and inti- 
mate communication with him. 



6 

The communications of the Hon. Joseph E. Spragne to 
the Salem Register, written during the period pending 
the presidential election of 1824, contain a great deal of 
information of the highest value and interest, relative to 
the life, services, and career of Mr. Adams. 

Some new facts of interest are contained in the admi- 
rable sermon delivered by Rev. Mr. Lunt, at Quincy, a 
performance rendering any further eulogy superfluous. 

A few passages in the following discourse, omitted in 

the delivery on account of its length, are inserted in the 

printed copy. 

EDWARD EVERETT. 

C.OIBRIDGE, 17th APRIL, 1848. 



EULOGY, 



MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY, 

AND YOU, GENTLEMEN OF THE LEGISLATURE :- 

You have devolved upon me the honorable duty 
of delivering a Eulogy on the life and character of 
the late President Adams; hut the performance of 
that duty has been already, in no small degree, 
anticipated. Most eloquent voices in the two Houses 
of Congress, inspired by the emotions which the 
great closing scene was so well calculated to pro- 
duce, have been heard in commemoration of his 
talents, his services, and his worth. Distinguished 
members of your own honorable bodies have given 
utterance, on behalf of the people of Massachusetts, 
to those feelings of respect and admiration, with which 
they claim him as their own. The funeral obsequies 
have been performed, in the most solemn and touching 
manner, at the seat of government. The population 
of the great cities of the Union has formed, I had 
almost said, one mighty funeral procession, to pay the 
last passing tribute to the mortal remains of the de- 
parted statesman, as they have been borne through 



8 

the countr}', with that unexampled and most honora- 
ble attendance of a congressional delegation from 
every State in the Union. Those honored relics have 
been received with every demonstration of pubUc 
respect within these venerated walls ; and they have 
been laid down in their final resting-place, with rites 
the most affecting and impressive, amidst the tears 
and blessings of relatives, friends, and neighbors, in 
his village home. 

Falling, as he has done, at a period of high politi- 
cal excitement, and entertaining and expressing, as he 
ever did, opinions the most decided in the boldest 
and most uncompromising manner, he has yet been 
mourned, as an object of respect and veneration, by 
good men and patriots of every party name. Leaders, 
that rarely met him or each other but in opposition, 
unite in doing honor to his memory, and have walked 
side by side in the funeral train. 

His eulogy has been pronounced, as far as some of 
the wisest and ablest in the land can do justice to the 
theme. His death has been lamented, as far as such 
a close of such a career can be a subject of lamenta- 
tion. The sable drapery that hangs around us still 
recalls the public sorrows, with which all that was 
mortal of the departed statesman was received beneath 
this consecrated roof. Gladly, as far as I am con- 
cerned, would T leave in silence the illustrious subject 
of these mournful honors to the reverent contempla- 



9 

tion of his countrymen, the witnesses of his career; 
of the young men who will learn it, in part, from still 
recent tradition; — and of those who succeed us, who 
will find the memorials of his long, laborious, and 
eventful life, in the archives of the country and on 
the pages of its history. 

But you. Gentlemen of the Legislature, have or- 
dered otherwise. You have desired that a more formal 
expression of respect for the memory of our illustri- 
ous fellow-citizen should be made on your behalf. 
You have wished to place on record a deliberate testi- 
monial of your high sense of his exalted worth. 
Leaving to the historian of the country to fill some of 
his brightest and most instructive pages with the full 
description of his various, long-continued, and faithful 
services, you have wished, while the impression of his 
loss is still fresh upon our minds, that those services 
should be the subject of such succinct review and such 
honest eulogium, as the nature of the occasion admits, 
and it has been in my power, under the pressure of 
other engagements, most imperfectly to prepare. 

Permit me to add. Gentlemen, that 1 find, in the 
circumstances under which you have invited me to 
this duty, the rule which ought to govern me in its 
performance. By a legislature composed of members 
belonging to the various political parties of the day, I 
have been unanimously requested to undertake this 
honorable and delicate trust. I see, in this fact, the 
2 



10 

proof, that it is as little your expectation as your wish 
that the eulogy should rekindle the animosities, if any 
there be, which time has long since subdued, and 
death has, I trust, extinguished forever. I come, at 
your request, to strew flowers upon the grave of an 
illustrious fellow- citizen ; not to dig there, with hate- 
ful assiduity, for roots of bitterness. I shall aim to 
strip my humble narrative of all the interest which it 
would derive from espousing present or past contro- 
versies. Some such I shall wholly pass over; to some 
I shall but allude ; on none shall I dwell farther than 
is necessary to acquit my duty. Called to survey a 
career which commences with the Revolution, and 
covers the entire political history of the country as an 
independent nation, there are no subjects of absorb- 
ing political interest, ever agitated in the country, 
which it would not be easy to put in requisition on 
this occasion ; subjects, in reference to which the 
roof that covers us, from the year 17G4 to the present 
day, has resounded with appeals, that have stirred the 
pubhc heart to its inmost fibre. Easy did I say? The 
difficulty will rather be to avoid these topics of contro- 
versy, and yet do any thing like justice to the occasion 
and the theme. I am sm-e that I shall consult your 
feelings not less than my own, if I try to follow our 
illustrious fellow- citizen through the various stages of 
his career, without mingling ourselves in the party 
struggles of the day; to exhibit him in the just 



11 

lineaments and fair proportions of life, without the 
exaggerated colorings of passion ; true to nature, but 
serene as the monumental marble ; warm with the 
purest sympathies and deepest affections of humanity, 
but purified and elevated into the earthly transfigura- 
tion of Genius, Patriotism, and Faith. 

John Quincy Adams was of a stock in which some 
of the best qualities of the New England character 
existed in their happiest combination. The basis of 
that character lies in what, for want of a better name, 
we must still call " Puritanism," connected, as that 
term of reproach is, with some associations, calculated 
to lessen our respect for one of the noblest manifesta- 
tions of our nature. But, in the middle of the last 
century, Puritanism in New England had laid aside 
much of its sternness and its intolerance, and had be- 
gun to reconcile itself with the milder charities of hfe ; 
retaining, however, amidst all classes of the popula- 
tion, as much patriarchal simplicity of manners, as 
probably ever existed in a modern civilized commu- 
nity. In the family of the elder President Adams, the 
narrow range of ideas, which, in most things, marked 
the first generations, had been enlarged by academic 
education, and by the successful pursuit of a liberal 
profession ; and the ancient severity of manners had 
been still farther softened by the kindly influences ex- 
erted by a mother who, in the dutiful language of him 



12 

whom we now commemorate, " united all the virtues 
which adorn and dignify the female and the Christian 
character." 

The period at which he was born was one of high 
and stirring interest. A struggle impended over the 
colonies, differing more in form than in its principles, 
from that which took place in England a little more 
than a century earlier. The agitations which pre- 
ceded it were of a nature to strain to their highest 
tension both the virtues and capacities of men. Of 
the true character of the impending events, no one 
seems earlier to have formed a distinct conception 
than the elder President Adams. He appears, at the 
veiy commencement of the Seven Years' War, and 
when he was but twenty years old, to have formed 
a general anticipation of all the great events, which 
have successively taken place for the last century. 
He seems dimly to have foreseen, even then, the 
independence of the colonies, and the establishment 
of a great naval power in the West. The capture of 
Quebec, followed by the total downfall of the French 
power on this continent, while it promised, as the 
first consequence, an indefinite extension of the 
British empire, suggested another train of results to 
the far-sighted and reflecting. History presents to 
us but few coincidences more instructive, than that 
which unites the peace of 1763, which ratified these 
great successes of British pohcy and British arms. 



13 

with the conception of that plan of American tax- 
ation, which resulted in the severance of the British 
empire. John Adams perceived, perhaps, hefore any 
other person, that the mother country, in depriving 
France of her American colonies, had dispossessed 
herself of her own. The first battles of American 
independence were gained on the heights of Abra- 
ham. 

I revert to these events, because they mark the 
character of the period when the life which we com- 
memorate began. The system of American taxation 
was adopted in 1764. The Stamp Act was passed in 
1765. The Essays on " the Canon and Feudal Law," 
of President Adams, were written the same year. 
In 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed, but the repeal 
was accompanied with the assertion of a right to tax 
America. This right was exercised the following 
year, by the imposition of duties on several articles 
imported into the colonies, and, on the 11th of June, 
of that year, John Quincy Adams was born. He 
came into life with the struggling rights of his 
country. " The cradle hymns of the child were the 
songs of liberty.'"'^ He received the first parental 
instructions from one, to whom the United Colonies 
had already begun to look for encouragement and 
guidance, in the mighty crisis of their fate. 

It would be interesting to trace, in their operation 
upon the opening mind of the child, the effect of 

* Mr. Senator Davis. 



14 

the exciting events of the day. Beneath the roof 
of the ekler Adams, the great doctrines of Enghsh 
hberty, for which our fathers contended, were house- 
hold words. He was barely three years old, when 
his father, — the ardent patriot, the zealous son of 
liberty, — appeared in court, as the counsel for the 
soldiers, who had fired upon the people in Boston, 
on the 5th of March, 1770. Two years later, his 
father was negatived by the Royal Governor, as a 
member of the Executive Council. In 1774, the 
port of Boston was shut, the Continental Congress 
agreed upon, and his father elected one of the four 
delegates, who represented Massachusetts in that 
assembly at Philadelphia. In 1775, the appeal was 
made to arms; and George Washington was ap- 
pointed to the chief command of the American forces, 
on the emphatic recommendation of John Adams. 
In 1776, independence was declared, on the report 
of a committee, on which Thomas Jefferson and John 
Adams stood first and second, and was triumphantly 
carried through Congress, mainly by the fervid elo- 
quence of Adams. All these great events, — eras in 
our history, (and, may I not say, eras in the civilized 
world? witness the convulsions now shaking Conti- 
nental Europe to the centre,) — although they occupy 
but a few chapters in the compends in which we read 
them, filled years of doubtful, strenuous, resolute exer- 
tion in the lives of our fathers. They were brought 



15 

home to the fireside at wliich young Adams was tram- 
ed, by his father's daily participation ; by his letters, 
when absent ; by the sympathizing mother's anxieties, 
hopes, and fears. There was not a time for years, 
when, to ask the question under that roof, " Will 
America establish her liberties ? " would not have 
been asking, in other words, " Shall we see our 
father's face in peace again?" It may fairly be 
traced to these early impressions, that the character 
of John Quincy Adams exhibited through life so 
much of what is significantly called " the spirit of 
seventy- six." 

And here I may be permitted to pause for a mo- 
ment, to pay a well deserved tribute of respect to the 
memory of the excellent mother, to whose instruc- 
tions so much of the subsequent eminence of the son 
is due. No brighter example exists of auspicious 
maternal influence, in forming the character of a 
great and good man. Her letters to him, some of 
which have been preserved and given to the world, 
might almost be called a manual of a wise mother's 
advice. The following passage from one of her pub- 
lished letters, written when her son was seven years 
old, will show how the minds of children were formed 
in the revolutionary period. " I have taken," she 
says, " a very great fondness for reading Rollin's An- 
cient History since you left me. I am determined to 
go through with it, if possible, in these days of my 



16 



solitude. I find great pleasure and entertainment 
from it, and have persuaded Johnny to read a page 
or two every day, and hope he will from his desire to 
oblige me, entertain a fondness for it." In that one 
phrase hes all the philosophy of education. The child 
of seven years old, who reads a serious book with 
fondness, from his desire to obhge his mother, has 
entered the high road of usefulness and honor. 

The troubled state of the times probably interfered 
with school education. John Quincy Adams, I be- 
lieve, never went to a school in America. Besides 
the instruction which he received from his mother, 
he was aided by the young gentlemen who studied 
law under his father. It is to one of these that allu- 
sion is made, in the following child's letter, written 
to his father, at Philadelphia, before he was ten years 
old, which I think you will not be displeased at hear- 
ing from the original manuscript. 

" Braintree, June the 2d, 1777. 

"Dear Sir, — I love to receive letters very well, much 
better than I love to write them. I make but a poor 
figure at composition, my head is much too fickle. My 
thoughts are running after birds' eggs, play, and trifles, 
till I get vexed with myself. Mamma has a troublesome 
task to keep me steady, and I own I am ashamed of my- 
self. I have but just entered the third volume of Smollet, 
though I had designed to have got half through it by this 
time. I have determined this week to be more diligent, 
as Mr. Thaxter will be absent at court, and I cannot pur- 



ir 

sue my other studies. I have set myself a stint, and de- 
termine to read the third volume half out. If I can but 
keep my resolution, I will write again at the end of the 
week, and give a better account of myself. I wish, sir, 
you would give me some instructions with regard to my 
time, and advise me how to proportion my studies and 
my play, in writing, and I will keep them by me and 
endeavor to follow them. I am, dear sir, with a present 
determination of growing better, 

Yours, 

John Q.uincy Adams. 

P. S. — Sir, if you will be so good as to favor me with 
a blank book, I will transcribe the most remarkable occur- 
rences I meet with in my reading, which will serve to fix 
them upon my mind." 

Such was the boy at the age of ten years ! 

We shall find, in the sequel, that the classical rule 
was not departed from, in the farther progress of his 
character. 

servetur ad imum 

Quails ab Incepto processerlt, et sibi constet. 

At this early period of his life, the horizon at once 
bursts widely open before him. From the bosom of 
a New England village, in which he had never been 
to school, he is transferred, before he is eleven years 
old, to the capital of France. Among the great 
movements of the revolution, no one is of greater 
importance than the alliance with France. It gave a 
character to the struggle in the eyes of the world, 
and eventually threw the whole political weight of 
3 



18 

continental Europe into the American scale. In the 
course of 1776, Silas Deane, Dr. Franklin, and Ar- 
thur Lee, were appointed commissioners to France, 
on behalf of Congress. Deane was recalled the fol- 
lowing year, and, in the month of November, 1777, 
John Adams was appointed his successor. Desu'ous 
of giving his son, then ten years and a half of age, 
those advantages of education which his native coun- 
try did not at that time afford, he took him to France. 
They sailed in the Boston frigate, commanded by 
Commodore Tucker, on the 13th February, 1778, 
and reached Bordeaux in the month of April, after a 
tempestuous passage over an ocean covered with the 
enemy's cruisers. 

The father established himself at Passy, the resi- 
dence of Dr. Franklin ; and here, for the first time, 
I find any mention of the son's receiving any other 
instruction than that of the fireside. Here he was 
sent to school, and laid the foundation for that inti- 
mate acquaintance with the French language, which 
he retained through life, and which was of the great- 
est service to him in his subsequent diplomatic ca- 
reer. It needs scarcely be added, that the occasional 
intercourse of Dr. Franklin, and of the eminent per- 
sons of almost every part of Europe, who sought the 
society of the American commissioners at Passy, was 
not lost upon one, who, though still in his boyhood, 
possessed uncommon maturity of character. 



19 

The counsels of the faithful and affectionate mother 
followed him beyond the sea. In one of the admu-a- 
ble letters to which I have referred, written during 
the visit to France, she says : — " Let me enjoin it 
upon you to attend constantly and steadfastly to the 
instructions of your father, as you value the happi- 
ness of your mother and your own welfare. His care 
and attention to you render many things unnecessary 
for me to write, which I might otherwise do. But 
the inadvertency and heedlessness of youth require 
hue upon line and precept upon precept, and when 
enforced by the joint efforts of both parents, will, I 
hope, have a due influence upon your conduct; for, 
dear as you are to me, I would much rather you 
should have found your grave in the ocean you have 
crossed, or that any untimely death should crop you 
in your infant years, than see you an immoral, profli- 
gate, or graceless child." * 

How faithfully the favored child availed himself of 
his uncommon privileges, needs hardly be said. At 
an age when the most forward children are rarely 
distinguished, except among their fellows at school, 
he had attracted the notice of many of the eminent 
persons who cultivated the acquaintance of his father. 
Mr. John Adams, in a letter to his wife, of 14th May, 
1779, says: — " My son has had great opportunities 
to see this country ; but this has unavoidably retarded 
his education in some other things. He has enjoyed 

* Mrs. Adams's Letters, I. 123. 



20 

perfect health from first to last, and is respected 
wherever he goes, for his vigor and vivacity both of 
mind and of body, for his constant good-humor, and 
for his rapid progress in French, as well as for his 
general knowledge, which at his age is imcommon." 
Though proceeding from the fond pen of a father, 
there is no doubt this character was entirely true.* 

The treaty of alliance with France had been con- 
cluded in the interval between Mr. Adams's appoint- 
ment and his arrival. Dr. Franklin was appointed 

* The following letter, written from school, to his father, is without 
date, but must have been written shortly after his arrival in France. 
It is not without interest, as a memorial of the first steps of a great 
mind : — 

" My work for a day : — 
" Make Latin, 
Explain Cicero, 
" Erasmus, 
" Appendix, 
Peirce Phaedrus, (Qu. parse), 
Learn Greek Racines, 

" Greek Grammar, 
Geography, 
Geometry, 
Fractions, 
Writing, 
Drawing. 
" As a young boy cannot apply himself to all those things, and keep 
a remembrance of them all, I should desire that you would let me know 
what of those I must begin upon at first. 

" I am your dutiful son, 

"John Quincy Adams." 



SI 

resident minister to the Court of Versailles, and Mr. 
Lee to Madrid; and, after a residence of about a year 
and a half at Paris, Mr. Adams, without waiting to 
be recalled, determined to return to the United 
States. He was invited by the king to take passage, 
with his son, on board the French frigate La Sensible, 
which was appointed to convey to America the Chev- 
alier de la Luzerne, the first minister to the United 
States, and the secretary of legation, the Marquis 
Barbe Marbois, afterwai'ds well known through all 
the phases of the French Revolution. They landed 
in Boston, August 2, 1779. At the moment of their 
return to the United States, an election was in prog- 
ress for delegates to the Convention which formed 
the Constitution of Massachusetts, and Mr. Adams, 
barely landed in America, was returned for his native 
town of Braintree. 

The convention assembled in Cambridge, on the 
1st of September, 1779, and having chosen a com- 
mittee of thirty-one, to prepare their work, adjourned 
to the 28th October. John Adams was of this com- 
mittee, and, on the day of the adjournment, reported 
the first draught of a Declaration of Eights and a 
Constitution. In the interval, he had i-eceived from 
Congress a new commission to negotiate a peace with 
Great Britain, and on the 14th of November, 1779, 
he again took passage on board La Sensible, on her 
return voyage to Europe. He had barely passed 



22 

three months in the country, during which he had 
drawn up a Constitution, that remains, after seventy 
yeai's, — in all material respects, — the frame of gov- 
ernment under which we live; has served, in some 
degree, as a model for other State Constitutions, and 
even for that of the United States; and under which, 
as we hope, our children, to the latest posterity, will 
continue to enjoy the blessings of rational liberty. 
I have dwelt a moment longer on these incidents, to 
illustrate the domestic influences under which John 
Quincy Adams was trained. 

He was again the companion of his father on this 
second -uintry voyage to Europe. The frigate sprung 
a leak through stress of weather, and, though bound 
to Brest, was obliged to put into Ferrol, a port in the 
northwestern corner of Spain. Here they arrived on 
the 7th of December, and were obliged to perform the 
journey partly on horses and mules through Gallicia, 
Asturias, and Biscay, in midwinter, to Paris. Mr. Ad- 
ams was accompanied, on this voyage, by Charles, his 
second son, long since deceased, and by Mr. Francis 
Dana, afterwards chief justice of Massachusetts, then 
acting as Secretary of Legation to Mr. Adams. Mr. 
Adams remained in Paris till midsummer of 1780, 
during which time the children were again placed at 
a boarding-school. In July of that yeai-, he repaired 
to Holland, with a commission from Congress to nego- 
tiate a treaty with the republic of the Netherlands, 



23 

for the recognition of the independence of the United 
States. The boys were sent to the pubhc school of 
the city of Amsterdam, and afterwards transferred to 
the academical department of the University at Ley- 
den, at that time not inferior in celebrity to any place 
of education on the continent of Europe. In July, 
1781, Mr. Dana, who, in the preceding October, had 
received a commission from Congress as Minister Plen- 
ipotentiary to the Court of St. Petersburg, started for 
that capital, taking with him John Quincy Adams as 
private secretary and interpreter, being then just four- 
teen years of age. In this capacity, he was recognized 
by Congress, and there is, perhaps, no other case of a 
person so young being employed in a civil office of 
trust, under the government of the United States. 
But, in Mr. Adams's career, there was no boyhood. 

The youthful secretary remained at St. Petersburg 
till October, 1782, during which period, the nature of 
his occupations was such, as to perfect his knowledge 
of the French language, and to give him, young as he 
was, no small insight into the political system of Eu- 
rope, of which the American question was, at that 
time, the leading topic. He also devoted himself with 
assiduity to his studies, and pursued aii extensive 
course of general reading. The official business of 
the American minister, who was not pubhcly received 
by the Empress Catherine, was mostly transacted with 
the Marquis de Verac, the French Ambassador, be- 



24 

tween whom and Mr. Dana, young Adams acted as 
interpreter.* In October, 1782, Mr. Adams senior 
brought to a close his arduous mission in Holland, b}^ 
concluding a treaty of amity, navigation, and com- 
merce with the States General, which remains in force 
between the two countries to this day. On the veiy 
next day, he started for Paris, to perform his duty, as 
joint commissioner with Dr. Franklin and Mr. Jay, to 
negotiate with the British envoys for peace ; and about 
the same time, his son left St. Petersburg for Hol- 
land. The young man, then but a little more than 
fifteen years of age, made the long journey from the 
Piussian capital alone, passing through Sweden, Den- 
mark, and the Hanse towns, and arriving at the Hague 
in the spring of 1 783. Here his studies were resumed, 
and pursued for a few months, till he was sent for by 
his father to Paris, where he was present at the sign- 
ing of the definitive treaty of peace in the month of 
September, 1783. I remember to have heard him 
say, that, acting as his father's secretaiy, he prepared 
one of the copies of that treaty. 

The two succeeding years were passed by young 
Adams mostly with his father, in England, Holland, 
and France, in which several countries, Mr. Adams 
senior was employed on the public business. During 
this period, his attention was divided between his 
studies, elementaiy and classical, and his emplojTiient 

* Mrs. Adams's Letters, Vol. II. 157. 



25 

as his father's secretaiy. " Congress are at such 
grievous expense," his father writes, " that I shall 
have no other secretary than my son. He, however, 
is a very good one. He writes a good hand very fast, 
and is steady to his pen and his books." * By the 
time he had reached the age of eighteen, besides being 
well advanced in the branches of study usually taught 
at schools, he was, no doubt, one of the most accom- 
plished young men of his time. In addition to a good 
foundation in Latin and Greek, he was master of the 
French ; he had read extensively in that language and 
in the Engiish ; he had seen several of the principal 
countries of Europe ; and he had watched, with a close- 
ness beyond his years, but required by his position, the 
political history of Europe during a very eventful lus- 
trum. In short, since he was twelve years old, he had 
talked with men. 

But his own judgment suggested to him that a 
longer residence in Europe was not, at this time, ex- 
pedient. His father was appointed Minister to the 
Court of St. James, in May, 1785 ; and, resisting the 
temptation to take up his residence with the family at 
London, now joined by that beloved mother from whom 
he had been so long separated, the son obtained the 
permission of his parents to return to the United 
States, for the sake of completing his academic educa- 
tion at Cambridge. He arrived in New York, in July, 

* Letters of John Adams, Vol. II. 102. 

4 



26 

1785. He was the bearer of a long letter from Mr. 
Jefferson, then Minister of the United States at Paris, 
to Mr. Vice President Gerry, in which Mr. Jefferson 
says, " I congratulate your country on then' prospect 
in this young man." He passed about six months at 
Haverhill, in the family of the Rev. Mr. Shaw, his ma- 
ternal relative, during which time he read over the 
books in which it was necessary to be examined for 
admission to advanced standing at college, none of 
which, with the exception of Horace, had been read 
by him before. He was admitted to the junior class 
at the university on 15th March, 1786. The usual 
payment required of students entering to advanced 
standing was, in his case, dispensed with ; '* the cor- 
poration and overseers having voted, as a mark of grat- 
itude to his father for the important services rendered 
by him to the United States, that he should be ad- 
mitted free of all charge to whatever standing he 
should, upon examination, be found qualified for."* 
Thus began his connexion with the university, of 
which he remained, to the rest of his life, a dutiful 
and an honored son, and a liberal benefactor. 

Possessing, by nature, talents of the highest order, 
especially that which is among the soonest developed 
in the human mind, the talent of memory, — having 
enjoyed great and peculiar advantages for general im- 
provement in Europe, — and now applying himself, 

* College Records. 



27 

with untiring assiduity, to his studies, he was soon 
generally regarded as standing at the head of his class. 
Such is the testimony of a venerable magistrate, (Mr. 
Justice Putnam,) who permits me to quote his author- 
ity, himself one of the most distinguished members of 
the class. I may add, on the same authority, that 
Adams, though of manners somewhat reserved, was 
distinguished for his generous feelings, his amiable 
temper, and engaging social qualities, to all which 
were added unshaken firmness of principle, and spot- 
less purity of life. He was, from the outset, eminently 
one of those, who, in the golden words of President 
Kirkland, " need not the smart of guilt to make them 
virtuous, nor the regret of folly to make them wise." 
He took his first degree at the Commencement of 
1787, receiving the second place in the usual assign- 
ment of college honors, the first having been given to 
a classmate who, to distinguished scholarship in other 
respects, was thought to add superior skill in decla- 
mation. Tlie subject of his oration shows the mature 
cast of his thought. It was " The Importance and 
Necessity of Pubhc Faith to the Weil-Being of a 
Community." 

He immediately commenced the study of the law 
at Newburyport, under the late Chief Justice Par- 
sons, who had already attained the reputation, in this 
part of the country, of being the most acute and 
learned jurist of the day. At the end of his three 



28 

years' noviciate, Mr. Adams removed to Boston, and 
established himself in the practice of his profession. 
Three eventful years at home ; in which the consti- 
tution of the United States had been framed and 
adopted, and George Washington and John Adams 
elected to the two first offices under the new govern- 
ment. Three eventful years abroad, in which the 
French revolution, — the first French revolution, — ^liad 
moved rapidly foiivard from that stage of early prom- 
ise, in which it was hailed by the sympathy of the 
friends of liberty in England and America, toward 
those excesses and crimes, which caused it to be 
afterwards viewed with anxiety, disgust, and horror. 
Mr. Adams was among the first who suspected the 
downward tendency. In 1791 he wrote a series of 
articles, in the Boston Centinel, with the signature of 
Publicola, which were intended as a corrective to 
some of the doctrines in Paine's Plights of Man. 
These fugitive essays were republished in London as 
an answer to Paine's work, and there ascribed to the 
author's father, John Adams. In 1793, on the 
breaking out of the war between Great Britain and 
France, a question of the utmost importance arose, 
how far the United States were bound, by the treaty 
of alliance with France, to take sides in the contro- 
versy. The division of opinion on this point, which 
commenced in the cabinet of General Washington, 
extended throughout the country. The question was 



29 

at length practically decided, by President Washing- 
ton's proclamation of neutrality. Before that impor- 
tant document appeared, Mr. Adams had published a 
short series of articles in the Boston Centinel, with 
the signature of Maixellus, maintaining the same 
doctrine. In these papers, he developed the two 
principles on which his policy as an American states- 
man rested, — union at home, and independence of all 
foreign combinations abroad." On the 4th July, 
1793, he delivered the usual anniversary oration be- 
fore the citizens of Boston ; and in the course of the 
following winter he wrote another series of ai'ticles 
for the public papers, with the signature of Columbus, 
in which the neutral policy of the United States was 
farther developed and maintained, and the principles 
of the law of nations, apphcable to the situation of 
the countiy, in reference to the European belHgerents, 
more fully unfolded. 

I dwell upon these fugitive essays, thrown off no 
doubt in brief hours of leisure amidst the occupations 
of a laborious profession, because they established at 
once the reputation of their author, as one of the 
soundest thinkers and most forcible writers of the 
day. They exercised a decided influence over his 
career in life. They were read at the seat of govern- 
ment; and in the month of May, 1794, without any 
previous intimation of his design, either to his father, 
the vice-president, or himself. President Washington 

* Mr, Upham's Memoir. 



30 

nominated Mr. John Q. Adams, minister resident at 
the Hague, a diplomatic station, at that period, scarcely 
inferior to the leading courts. Mr. Adams arrived in 
Holland about the time of the French invasion, and 
the consequent disorganization of the government 
and the country. The embarrassments arising from 
this state of things led him to think of resigning his 
office and coming home ; but it was the advice of the 
president," accompanied with the approval of his con- 
duct, that he should remain at his post. In the last 
year of his administration, (1796,) Washington ap- 
pointed him minister plenipotentiary to Lisbon. 

About this period of his Hfe, and during a tempo- 
raiy residence in London, for the purpose of exchang- 
ing the ratifications of the treaty with Great Britain, 
and making arrangements for executing some of its 
provisions, the acquaintance of Mr. Adams com- 
menced A^dth the daughter of Mr. Joshua Johnson, 
of Maryland, — a gentleman then acting as consular 
agent of the United States at London. A matrimo- 
nial engagement took place, which resulted, on the 
26th July, 1797, in his marriage with the accom- 
plished and venerable lady, who for more than fifty 
years was the faithful partner of his affections and 
honors, and suiwives to deplore his loss. 

Mr. Adams, senior, was chosen president in the 
autumn of 1796. On this occasion he was naturally 
led to contemplate with some anxiety the public rela- 

* Washington's Works, xi. 56. 



31 

tions of his son. On this point he took counsel of 
the truest of friends and safest of advisers, Presi- 
dent Washington, and received from him that cele- 
brated letter of the 20th of February, 1797, a sen- 
tence from which is inscribed on yonder wall : — " I 
give it as my decided opinion," says President Wash- 
ington, " that Mr. Adams is the most valuable char- 
acter we have abroad, and that he will prove himself 
to be the ablest of all our diplomatic corps." With 
this opinion, he expressed the hope and the wish, 
that Mr. Adams's advancement might not be checked 
by an over-delicacy on his father's part. 

Circumstances rendering it inexpedient, at that 
time, to establish the mission to Portugal, Mr. Adams's 
destination was changed to Berlin. He received the 
appointment as minister to Prussia, on the 31st 
May, 1797. In the summer of 1798, retaining his 
office as minister to Prussia, he was commissioned to 
negotiate a treaty with Sweden. During his mission 
at Berlin, he concluded a treaty of amity and com- 
merce, after a veiy able and protracted negotiation, 
in which the rights of neutral commerce were dis- 
cussed by Mr. Adams and the Prussian commission- 
ers. In the summer of 1800, he made a tour in 
Silesia, and wrote an interesting and instructive series 
of letters, containing the result of his observations. 
They were published without his consent in the Port- 
folio, at Philadelphia, collected in a volume at Lon- 



32 

don, and translated into French and German. With 
a view to perfect his acquaintance with the German, 
Mr. Adams, during his residence at Berhn, executed 
a complete metrical version of Wieland's Oheron, not 
being aware at the time that it had been aheady 
translated in England. 

He was recaUed toward the close of his father's 
administration, but did not arrive in America till 
September, 1801. In the following spring, he was 
elected to the senate of Massachusetts for the county 
of Suffolk, and in the course of the year was chosen 
by the legislature a senator of the United States, for 
the senatorial term commencing on the 3d of March, 
1803. His term of service in the senate of the 
United States fell upon one of the great periods of 
crisis in our pohtical history. The party which had 
supported his father, and to which he himself be- 
longed, had fallen into divisions, in the course of his 
father's administration. These divisions had con- 
tributed to the revolution by which Mr. Jefferson was 
brought into power. The excitements growing out of 
this state of things were not yet allayed, but con- 
nected themselves, as all domestic questions did, with 
the absorbing questions that grew out of the foreign 
relations of the country, in the war which then raged 
in Europe, and threatened to draw America into the 
vortex. The senators of Massachusetts differed in 
their views of the policy required by the emergency. 



33 

and those adopted by Mr. Adams, who supported the 
administration, being at variance with the opinions of 
a majority of his constituents, he resigned his -seat in 
the senate, in March, 1808. 

The repose from pohtical engagements, thus af- 
forded him, was devoted by Mr. Adams to the farther 
prosecution of pursuits in which he was aheady 
engaged, and which, to him, were scarcely less con- 
genial. His literary tastes had always been fondly 
and assiduously cultivated, and, for a public man, his 
habits were decidedly studious. Gn the death of 
President Willard, in 1804, several of the influential 
friends of Harvard College had urged upon Mr. Ad- 
ams, to allow himself to be considered as a candidate 
for the presidency of the University. These overtures 
he declined ; but in the following year it was deter- 
mined, by the corporation, to appoint a Professo}' of 
Rhetoric and Oratory, on the foundation of Mr. Boyls- 
ton, and Mr. Adams was chosen. He delivered his 
inaugural address in July, 1806, and continued to 
discharge the duties of the professorship, by the deliv- 
ery of a course of lectures, and by presiding over the 
public exercises in declamation, till the month of July, 
1809. It was at this time, and as a member of one 
of the younger classes at college, that I first saw Mr. 
Adams, and listened to his well-remembered voice, 
from the chair of instruction ; little anticipating that, 
after the lapse of forty years, my own humble voice 
5 



34 

would be heard, in the performance of this mournful 
office. 

Some who now hear me will recollect the deep 
interest with which these lectures were listened to, 
not merely by the youthful audience for which they 
were prepared, but by numerous voluntary hearers 
from the neighborhood. They formed an era in the 
University; and were, I believe, the first successful 
attempt, in this country, at this form of instruction 
in any department of literature. They were collected 
and published in two volumes, completing the theo- 
retical part of the subject. I think it may be fairly 
said, that they will bear a favorable comparison with 
any treatise, on the subject, at that time extant in 
our language. The standard of excellence, in every 
branch of critical learning, has greatly advanced in 
the last forty years, but these lectures may still be 
read with pleasure and instruction. Considered as 
a systematic and academical treatise upon a subject 
which constituted the chief part of the intellectual 
education of the Greeks and Romans, these lectures, 
rapidly composed as they were delivered, and not 
revised by the author before publication, are not to 
be regarded in the light of a standard performance. 
But let any statesman or jurist, even of the present 
day, in America or Europe, — whose life, like Mr. 
Adams's, has been actively passed in professional 
and political engagements at home and abroad, — 



35 

attempt, in the leisure of two or three summers, — 
his mind filled with all the great political topics of 
the day, — to prepare a full course of lectures on any 
branch of literature, to be delivered to a difficult and 
scrutinizing, though in part a youthful audience, and 
then trust them to the ordeal of the press, and he 
will be prepared to estimate the task which was per- 
formed by Mr. Adams. 

From these, to him, not distasteful engagements, 
Mr. Adams was soon recalled to the public service. 
In March, 1809, he was nominated by President 
Madison to the Court of St. Petersburg, and, in the 
summer of the same year, returned to the important 
com't which he had visited twenty-eight years before, 
in his boyhood, as secretary to Mr. Dana. He came 
at a critical juncture of affairs, and with great means 
and occasions of usefulness. The whole foreign world 
was, at this time, shut out from the Continental 
Courts, by the iron rigor of the system of Napo- 
leon. America, though little known at the Imperial 
Court, was regarded with interest, as a rising transat- 
lantic State of great importance, and Mr. Adams 
appeared as her first accredited representative. He 
was master of the two foreign languages which, — to 
the exclusion of the native Russian, — are alone 
spoken in the political and court circles. He was 
thus enabled the more easily to form relations of 
more than ordinary kindness with the emperor and 



36 

leading members of the imperial government, and it 
iswell understood to have been through this instru- 
mentality, that the emperor was led to offer his 
mediation to the United States and Great Britain, 
in the war then just commenced. The mediation 
was accepted by the American government, and Mr, 
Adams was appointed, in conjunction with Messrs. 
Gallatin and Bayard, to conduct the negotiation. 
Those gentlemen arrived at St. Petersburg in July, 
1813. The Emperor Alexander was absent on the 
gTeat campaign of that year, but the conferences of 
the American commissioners were opened with Count 
Ptomanzoff, chancellor of the empire. The British 
government declined to negotiate under the media- 
tion, and Messrs. Bayard and Gallatin left St. Peters- 
burg in January, 1814, Mr. Adams remaining, as 
resident minister. 

But Great Britain, although nominally declining 
to negotiate under the mediation, accompanied her 
refusal with an offer to treat for peace with the 
United States directly, either at Gottenburg or 
London, and this offer was accepted by the American 
government, the preference being given to the former 
place. Mr. Adams was accordingly appointed, in joint 
commission with Messrs. Bayard, Clay, and Pussell, 
to whom was afterwards added Mr. Gallatin, to nego- 
tiate for peace at Gottenburg. Mr. Adams received 
this commission in April, 1814, with instructions to 



37 

proceed immediately to the place just named. He 
took passage from Revel in the first vessel, after the 
breaking up of the ice ; and after repeated delay and 
detention, and great risk from the same cause, he 
arrived at Stockholm on the 25th of May. 

He there learned that an arrangement had been 
made by Messrs. Bayard and Gallatin, — who were in 
London, — with the British government, by which the 
seat of negotiation had been transferred to Ghent. 
An American sloop-of-war was then at Gottenburg, 
having, as a cartel, conveyed Messrs. Clay and Rus- 
sell to that place. Mr. Adams accordingly proceeded 
from Stockholm to Gottenburg, and, embarking with 
Mr. Russell on board the sloop-of-war, landed from 
her at the Texel, and thence proceeded by land to 
Ghent. There he arrived on the 24th of June, and 
on that day six months, the treaty of peace was 
signed. Mr. Adams's name stands first, on the hst 
of the negotiators. 

Mr. Adams had been informed by the secretaiy of 
state, (Mr. Monroe), at the time he was appointed 
under the mediation of the emperor of Russia, that, 
in the event of the conclusion of peace, it was the 
intention of President Madison to nominate him as 
minister to London. He accordingly went to Paris, 
and was there during the presence of the alHed mon- 
archs and their armies, and in the Hundred Days. 
He was joined by his family in March, 1815. Thek 



38 

hardships and perils, in performing the journey from 
St. Petersburg to France, in that time of universal 
commotion and uncertainty, would form an interesting 
narrative, for which, however, this is not the place. 
On the 7th of May, he received official information of 
his appointment; and although the ordinary commu- 
nications between the two countries were interrupted, 
and the passage not unattended with delay and diffi- 
culty, he arrived in London on the 15th of May. He 
immediately engaged with his associate commission- 
ers, Messrs. Clay and Gallatin, in negotiating a con- 
vention of commerce with Great Britain, which was 
concluded on the 3d of July, 1815. 

Having thus, in happy coincidence with his ven- 
erable father's career, cooperated in establishing a 
peace with Great Britain, he remained, like his father, 
in London, for two years, as the American Minister at 
that court. He was then, in 1817, invited by Pres- 
ident Monroe to return to America, as Secretary of 
State under the new administration. I believe it was 
universally admitted, that a better appointment could 
not have been made. It will be recollected, by many 
persons present, that General Jackson, then just be- 
ginning to exercise great political influence in the 
country, spoke of Mr. Adams " as the fittest person 
for the office ; — a man who would stand by the coun- 
try in the hour of danger." 

But the hour of danger did not arrive at home or 



39 

abroad during the administration of Mr. Monroe, 
which continued through two terms of office, for 
the whole of which Mr. Adams was Secretary of 
State. During this entire period, he maintained un- 
broken the most friendly relations with Mr. Monroe, 
and gave a steady and efficient support to his admin- 
istration. The office of Secretary of State is, at all 
times, one of immense labor ; never more so, than in 
the hands of Mr. Adams. I presume no person in 
high office ever derived less assistance from those 
under him, or did more work with his own hands. 
No opinion, for which he was responsible, was ever 
taken on trust, upon the examination of others ; no 
paper of any consequence, to which he was to sign 
his name, was the product of another man's mind. It 
would be foreign from my purpose, did time admit, to 
discuss the measures of public interest which engaged 
the attention of the government and people of the 
country during Mr. Monroe's two terms of service in 
the presidency. His administration will ever be mem- 
orable, in our political history, for the substantial 
fusion of the two great political parties, which led to 
his unanimous reelection in 1821. It Avill also be 
remembered for the acquisition of Florida, which was 
ceded by Spain as an indemnification for spoliations 
on our commerce. The treaty for this cession was 
negotiated, with consummate ability, by Mr. Adams, 
and signed on the 22d of February, 1819. The inde- 



40 

pendence of the Spanish provinces on tliis continent 
was also recognized under this administration, — a 
measure rather assented to than warmly approved 
by Mr. Adams, for he doubted their capacity for self- 
government; an opinion, of which the soundness is 
abundantly justified by passing events. 

Out of the subsidence of the old parties, sprung the 
vai'iously contested presidential election of 1824. For 
a quarter of a century, a succession had been estab- 
lished from the department of state to the presidency. 
There were certainly good reasons, on the present 
occasion, why this practice should not be broken in 
upon ; but, in addition to the successful candidate for 
the vice-presidency, the south and the west brought 
three presidential candidates into the field, who divided 
the electoral vote, though unequally, with Mr. Adams. 
The whole number of votes was two hundred and sixty- 
one, of which General Jackson received ninety-nine, 
and Mr. Adams eighty-four. But I think it was cal- 
culated, at the time, that Mr. Adams's vote, in the 
primary assemblies of the people, was not less than his 
rival's. The choice devolved upon the house of rep- 
resentatives, for the second time since the formation 
of the present government. The first occasion was in 
1801, when the constitution itself had nearly sunk 
under the struggle, which was prolonged through the 
second day, and to the thirty-sixth balloting. On the 
present occasion, the elements of a struggle equally 



41 

perilous were thought to exist ; and calculation was 
entirely at fault as to the result. The choice was de- 
cided on the first ballot, and fell upon Mr. Adams. 
It was made known to him in advance of the official 
communication, by a personal and political friend, 
who happened to be present ; and who, to my question, 
a few weeks after, how he received the intelligence, 
answered, " like a philosopher." 

Mr. Adams's administration was, in its principles 
and pohcy, a continuation of Mr. Monroe's. The 
special object which he proposed to himself was, to 
bind the distant parts of the countiy together, and 
promote their mutual prospeiity, by increased facih- 
ties of communication. Unlike Mr. Monroe's, Mr. 
Adams's administration encountered, from the outset, 
a formidable and harassing opposition. It is now, I 
believe, generally admitted to have been honest, able, 
and patriotic. This praise has lately been accorded 
to it, in the most generous terms, by distinguished 
individuals, in Congress and elsewhere, who were not 
numbered among its supporters. That the president, 
himself, devoted to the pubhc business the utmost 
stretch of his Herculean powers of thought and labor, 
hardly needs to be told. 

Two incidents occmTed during his administration, 

which ought not to be wholly passed over in this 

hasty sketch : — one was the visit of Lafayette, whom 

Mr. Adams received, at the presidential mansion, with 

6 



42 

an addi'ess of extraordinary eloquence and beauty; 
the other, the death of his venerable father, spared 
to the patriarchal age of ninety- one, and to see his 
son raised to the presidency, and dying, with his 
ancient associate, Jefferson, within a few hours of 
each other, on the fiftieth anniversary of Indepen- 
dence, — which they had been associated in declaring. 

At the close of the term of four years, for which 
Mr. Adams was elected, General Jackson was chosen 
to succeed him. Mr. Adams, I doubt not, left the 
office with a hghter heart than he entered it. It was, 
at this time, his purpose, — as he informed me him- 
self, — on retiring from office, to devote himself to 
Hterary labors, and especially to writing the history 
of his father's life and times. Some commencement 
was made, by him, of the preliminary labors requisite 
for this great undertaking. He was, however, though 
past the meridian of life, in good health. He pos- 
sessed an undiminished capacity of physical and in- 
tellectual action. He had an experience of affairs, 
larger and more various than any other man in 
America; and it was felt by the public, that he ought 
to be induced, if possible, to return to the political 
service of the country. He was accordingly chosen, 
at the next congressional election, to represent the 
people of his native district, in the House of Piepre- 
sentatives of the United States. 

It was, perhaps, a general impression among his 



43 

personal friends, that, in yielding to this call, he had 
not chosen wisely for his happiness or fame. It was 
a step never before taken by a retiring chief magis- 
trate. The experience and wisdom of his predeces- 
sors had often exerted a salutary influence over pubhc 
opinion, for the very reason that their voice was 
heard only from the seclusion of private life, by those 
who sought their counsel. Mr. Adams was about to 
expose himself to the violence of political warfare, 
not always conducted with generosity on the floor of 
Congress. But in deciding to obey the call of his 
constituents, he followed, I am confident, not so much 
the strong bent of his inclination, and the fixed habit 
of his life, as an inward, all- controlling sense of duty. 
He was conscious of his capacity to be useful, and his 
work was not yet done. Besides, he needed no indul- 
gence, he asked no favor, he feared no opposition. 

He carried into Congress the dihgence, punctu- 
ahty, and spirit of labor, which were his second — ^I 
had almost said his first — nature. My seat was, for 
two years, by his side ; and it would have scarcely 
more surprised me to miss one of the marble col- 
umns of the hall from its pedestal, than to see his 
chair empty. The two great pohtical questions of the 
day were those which related to the protective and 
financial systems. He was placed, by the speaker Of 
the House, at the head of the Committee on Manu- 
factures. He was friendlv to the policy of giving our 



u 

rising establishments a moderate protection against 
the iiTegular pressure of foreign competition. Be- 
Ueving that manufacturing pursuits, — as the great 
school of mechanical skill, — are an important ele- 
ment of national prosperity, he thought it unwise to 
allow the compensation of labor in this department 
to be brought down to the starvation standard of 
Europe. He was also a firm and efficient champion 
of the Bank of the United States, then subsisting 
under a charter of Congress, and, up to that time, 
conducted, as he thought, with integrity. On these, 
and all the other topics of the day, he took an active 
part, employing himself with assiduity in the commit- 
tee room, prepaiing elaborate reports, and, occasion- 
ally, though not frequently, pom'ing out the affluence 
of his mind in debate. 

I shall, perhaps, be pardoned, for introducing here 
a shght personal recollection, which serves, in some 
degree, to illustrate his habits. The sessions of the 
two last days of (I think) the twenty-third Congress 
were prolonged, the one for nineteen, and the other 
for seventeen hours. At the close of the last day's 
session, he remained in the hall of the house, the 
last seated member of the body. One after another 
of the members had gone home ; many of them, for 
hours. The hall, — brilliantly lighted up, and gaily 
attended, as was, and perhaps is still, the custom at 
the beginning of the last evening of a session, — 



^5 

had become cold, dark, and cheerless. Of the mem- 
bers who remained, to prevent the public business 
from dying for want of a quorum, most, but himself, 
were sinldng from exhaustion, although they had 
probably taken their meals at the usual hours, in the 
course of the day. After the adjournment, I went up 
to his seat, to join company with him homeward; 
and, as I knew he came to the house at eight o'clock 
in the morning, and it was then past midnight, I 
expressed a hope that he had taken some refreshment 
in the course of the day. He said he had not left his 
seat, but, holding up a bit of hard bread in his fingers, 
gave me to understand in what way he had sustained 
nature. 

Such was his course in the House of Representa- 
tives, up to the year 1835, during which I was the 
daily witness of it, as an humble associate member. 
Had he retired from Congress at that time, it would 
have been, perhaps, rather with a reputation brought 
to the house, than achieved on the floor ; a reputation 
" enough to fill the ambition of a common man," nay, 
of a very uncommon one ; but it would probably have 
been thought that, surpassing most others, he had 
hardly equalled himself. But from this time forward, 
for ten years, (1835-1845,) he assumed a position 
in a great degree new, and put forth a wonderful 
increase of energy and power. Some of the former 
questions, which had long occupied Congress, had 



46 

been, at least for the time, disposed of, and new ones 
came up, which roused Mr. Adams to a higher action 
of his faculties than he had yet displayed. He was 
now sixty-eight years of age, — a time of life, I need 
not say, at which, in most cases, the firmest frame 
gives way, and the most ardent temper cools ; but the 
spirit of Mr. Adams, — bold and indomitable as his 
whole life showed it to be, — blazed forth, from this 
time foi^ward, for ten years, with a fervor and strength 
which astonished his friends, and stands, as I think, 
almost, if not quite, without a parallel. I do not for- 
get the limits prescribed to me by the circumstances 
under which I speak; but no one, capable of estimat- 
ing the noblest traits of character, can wish me to 
slur over this period of Mr. Adams's life ; no one, but 
must be touched with the spectacle which, day after 
day, and month after month, and session after session, 
was exhibited by him, to whom had now been accorded, 
by universal consent, the title of the "old man elo- 
quent;" — and far more deserving of it he was, than 
the somewhat frigid rhetorician on whom it was ori- 
ginally bestowed. There he sat, the deepest- stricken 
in years, but, of the whole body, the individual most 
capable of physical endurance and intellectual effort; 
his bare head erect, while younger men drooped ; " his 
peremptory, eagle-sighted eye " unquenched, both by 
day and by night : 

intrepid us vultu, meruitque timeri 



Non metuens. 



47 

It is unnecessary to state that the new questions, to 
which I refer, were those connected with slavery. On 
no great question, perhaps, has the progress of pubhc 
opinion been more decided, both in Europe and Amer- 
ica, than on this subject. It is but ahttle more than a 
century since England eagerly stipulated with Spain 
for the right to supply the Spanish colonies with slaves 
from Africa ; and the carrying trade, from the same 
ill-fated coasts to our own Southern States, then colo- 
nies, was conducted by the merchants and navigators 
of oui' own New England. Within the present gener- 
ation, we have seen the slave trade denounced as a 
capital felony in both countries. I am not aware that 
any discussion of this subject, of a nature powerfully 
to affect the public mind, took place in Congress, till 
full thirty years after the adoption of the constitution. 
It then arose on occasion of the admission of the State 
of Missouri into the Union, and on the proposition to 
incorporate into the constitution of that State the 
principle of the immortal ordinance of 1787, for the 
organization of the territory northwest of the Ohio, 
viz., " There shall be neither slaveiy nor involuntary 
servitude in the said tenitory, otherwise than in the 
punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall be duly 
convicted." Mr. Adams was in the department of 
state at the time of the admission of Missouri, and 
was not called upon to take any part in the discussion. 

The general agitation of the subject in the commu- 



48 

nity at large elates from a still more recent period, 
commencing about the time of Mr. Adams's accession 
to the presidency. It was animated, no doubt, by the 
movement which took place about the same time in 
Great Britain, and which, in the course of a few years, 
resulted in that most illustrious act of Christian be- 
nevolence, by which, in a single day, eight hundred 
thousand fellow-beings passed from a state of bondage 
to one of unconditional freedom, and that without a 
ciy or a gesture that threatened the public peace. 

Tlie public opinion of the United States, sympa- 
thizing as it must at all times with that of the other 
great branches of the human family, was deeply inter- 
ested in the progress of these chscussions abroad, and 
received a powerful impulse from their result. With 
the organized agitation, in the free States, of the 
questions connected with slavery, Mr. Adams did not, 
as a citizen I beheve, intimately connect himself. 
Toward their introduction into Congress, as subjects 
of free discussion, he contributed more than any other 
man; than all others united. He approached the 
subject, however, with a caution inspu-ed by a pro- 
found sense of its difficulty and delicacy. I know 
it to have been his opinion, as late as 1828, that, 
for the presidency and vice-presidency, the candi- 
dates ought to be selected from the two great sec- 
tions of the countiy. His first act as a member of 
Congi'ess, in 1831, was to present the memorial of 



49 

the " Friends," of Philadelphia, praying, among other 
things, for the abohtion of slavery in the District of 
Columbia ; but, while he paid the highest tribute to 
the motives of the petitioners, he avowed himself not 
prepared to grant the prayer of the memorial. But 
whether it was that his own opinions and feelings had 
shared the movement of the general mind of the age 
on this subject; or that he perceived, in the course of 
a few years, that the time had come when it must be 
met and discussed in all its aspects ; certain it is that, 
from the time the right of petition was drawn dis- 
tinctly in question, Mr. Adams placed himself boldly 
on that ground, and, from that time forward, stood 
firmly at his post, as the acknowledged congressional 
leader. No labor was too great, no attention too 
minute, to be bestowed by him in receiving and pre- 
senting the petitions which were poured into his hands 
from evei*y part of the countiy. No strength or vio- 
lence of opposition, or menaces of danger, deterred 
him from the office he had assumed ; and every at- 
tempt to disheailen and silence him but estabhshed, 
the more firmly, the moral ascendency which he had 
acquired in the house. His warmest opponents, 
while they condemned his poHcy, admitted his sincer- 
ity, admu-ed his courage, and owned his power. His 
rising to adcbess the house became the signal for 
mute and respectful attention ; the distant clustered 
round his seat ; the listless and the idle gave heed, 
7 



60 

and every Avord that fell from his lips was listened to 
almost like the response of an oracle. I say this alike 
to the honor of the living and the dead. 

I may be permitted to recall to your recollection the 
opening of the 26th Congress, in December, 1839, 
when, in consequence of a two-fold delegation from 
New Jersey, the house was unable, for some time, to 
complete its organization, and presented, to the coun- 
try and the world, the perilous and discreditable aspect 
of the assembled representatives of the people unable 
to form themselves into a constitutional body. Fully 
to enter into the scene, it must be remembered that 
there are no two ideas more deeply imbedded in the 
Anglo-Saxon mind than these ; — one, the omnipotence 
of every sovereign parliamentary, and congressional 
body, (I mean, of course, within the limits of its con- 
stitutional competence,) and the other, the absolute 
inabihty of one of these omnipotent bodies to make 
the shghtest movement, or perform the most indiffer- 
ent act, except through a formal expression of its will 
by its duly appointed organs. Now, on first assembling, 
the House has no officers, and the clerk of the pre- 
ceding Congress acts, by usage, as chairman of the 
body, till a speaker is chosen. On this occasion, after 
reaching the State of New Jersey, the acting clerk 
dechned to proceed in calling the roll, and refused to 
entertain any of the motions which were made for the 
purpose of extricating the House from its embarrass- 



51 

ment. Many of the ablest and most judicious members 
had addressed the House in vain, and there was noth- 
ing but confusion and disorder in prospect. Toward 
the close of the fourth day, Mr. Adams rose, and ex- 
pectation waited on his words. Having, by a powerful 
appeal, brought the yet unorganized assembly to a 
perception of its hazardous position, he submitted a 
motion requiring the acting clerk to proceed in calling 
the roll. This and similar motions had already been 
made by other members. The difficulty was, that 
the acting clerk declined to entertain them. Accord- 
ingly, Mr. Adams was immediately interrupted by a 
burst of voices demanding, " How shall the question 
be put?" "Who will put the question?" The voice 
of Mr. Adams was heard above the tumult, " I intend 
to put the question myself!" That word brought 
order out of chaos. There was the master-mind. A 
distinguished member from South Carolina, (Mr, 
Rhett,) moved that Mr. Adams himself should act as 
chairman of the body till the House was organized, 
and, suiting the action to the word, himself put the 
motion to the House. It prevailed unanimously, and 
Mr. Adams was conducted to the chair, amidst the 
irrepressible acclamations of the spectators. Well did 
Mr. Wise, of Virginia, say, " Sir, I regard it as the 
proudest hour of your life ; and if, when you shall be 
gathered to your fathers," (that time, alas, is now 
come !) "I were asked to select the words which, in 



52 

my judgment, are best calculated to give at once the 
character of the man, I would inscribe upon your tomb 
this sentence, ' I will put the question myself.' " 

And thus it was that he was established, at last, in a 
relation to the House, which no man before had ever 
filled. The differences of opinion of course were 
great ; the shock of debate often violent ; but it was 
impossible not to respect the fearless, conscientious, 
unparalleled old man. Into this feeling at last every 
other emotion subsided; and I know not to which 
party the greater praise is due, — the aged statesman 
who had so nobly earned this homage, or the generous 
opponents by whom it was cheerfully paid. 

Nor was this spontaneous deference a mere per- 
sonal sentiment, confined to associates on the floor 
of Congress. It extended to the People. In the 
summer of 1 843, Mr. Adams was invited to go to 
Cincinnati, and lay the corner-stone of an Observa- 
tory, about to be built by the liberal subscriptions of 
the friends of science in that city. His journey, from 
Massachusetts to Ohio, was a triumphal procession. 
New York poured out the population of her cities 
and viUages to bid him welcome. Since the visit of 
Lafayette, the country had seen nothing like it. And 
if I wished to prove to the young men of the country, 
by the most instructive instances, that the only true 
greatness is that which rests on a moral basis, I 
would point them to the ex-president of the United 



53 

States, on the occasion referred to, and the ex-king 
of the French : — the one, retiring to private hfe, an 
unsuccessful, but not discredited, candidate for reelec- 
tion to the chak of state ; ruhng, in a serene old age, 
in the respect and affection of his fellow-citizens ; 
borne, at seventy-six, almost on their shoulders, 
from one joyous reception to another: the other, 
sovereign, but yesterday, of a kingdom stretching from 
Mount Atlas to the Khine ; master of an army to bid 
defiance to Europe ; with a palace for every month, and 
a revenue of three miUions of francs for every day in the 
year ; and to-day, (let me not seem to trample on the 
fallen, as I utter the words,) steahng with the aged 
pai'tner of his throne and of his fall, in sordid 
disguise, from his capital ; without one of that 
mighty host to strike a blow in his defence, if not 
from loyalty, at least from compassion ; not daring to 
look round, even to see if the child were safe, on 
whom he had just bestowed the mockery of a crown; 
and compelled to beg a few francs, from the guards 
at his palace-door, to help him to flee from his 
kingdom ! 

But I have wandered from my theme, and must 
hasten with you, to contemplate a far different tenni- 
nation of a more truly glorious career. On the 20th 
of November, 1846, Mr. Adams, being then at the 
house of his son, in Boston, and preparing for his 
departm-e for Washington, walked out, with a friend. 



54 

to visit the new Medical College, and was struck with 
palsy by the way. He recovered strength enough to 
return in a few weeks to Washington, but it was, in 
his own estimation, the stroke of death. His jour- 
nal, — kept with regularity for more than half a cen- 
tuiy, — stops that day ; and when, after an interval of 
nearly four months, he resumed it, it was with the 
caption of " Posthumous Memoir." Having recorded 
the event of the 20th of November, and his subse- 
quent confinement, he adds, " From that hour I date 
my decease, and consider myself, for every useful 
purpose to myself and fellow- creatures, dead; and 
hence I call this, and what I may hereafter write, 
a posthumous memoir." From this time forward, 
though his attendance was regularly given in the 
House of Representatives, he rarely took part in the 
debates. His summer was passed, as usual, in his 
native village. In the month of October last, he 
made a visit to Cambridge, as chairman of the Com- 
mittee on the Observatory, — an institution in which 
he ever took the greatest interest, and of which he 
was, from the first, a most liberal benefactor, — and 
shortly afterwards ch-ew up the admirable letter, in 
reference to this establishment, and the promotion 
generally of astronomical science, — a letter which at- 
ti'acted universal attention a few weeks since, in the 
public prints. This was the last letter, I believe, of 
considerable length, wholly written with his own 



55 

hand. He returned to Washington in the montli of 
November, and resumed his usual attendance in the 
Capitol ; but the sands were nearly run out. 

Never did a noble life terminate in a more beauti- 
ful close. On Sunday, the 20th of February, he 
appeared in unusual health. He attended pubhc 
worship, in the forenoon, at the Capitol, and, in the 
afternoon, at St. John's Church. At nine o'clock in 
the evening he retired, with his wife, to his library, 
where she read to him a sermon of Bishop Wilber- 
force, on Time, — hovering, as he was, on the verge of 
Eternity. This was the last night which he passed 
beneath his own roof. On Monday, the 21st, he 
rose at his usual very early hour, and engaged in his 
accustomed occupations with his pen. An extraordi- 
nary alacrity pervaded his movements ; the cheerful 
step with which he ascended the Capitol was 
remarked by his attendants ; and, at about half-past 
twelve, as he seemed rising in his seat, he was struck 
with death. His last audible words were, " This is 
the end of earth," — " I am composed." He con- 
tinued to breathe, but without apparent conscious- 
ness, till the evening of the twenty-third instant, and 
died in the Capitol. 

Go there, politician, and behold a fall worth all the 
triumphs the Capitol ever witnessed ! Go there, scep- 
tic, you who believe that matter and mind are one, 
and both are a " kneaded clod," and explain how it is 



56 

that, witliin that aged and shattered frame, just sink- 
ing into the dust from which it was taken, there can 
dwell a principle of thought and feeling endued with 
such a divine serenity and courage, and composed, 
because it feels, that the end of earth is the beginning 
of heaven ! 

Thus fell, at the post of duty, one of the most 
extraordinary men that have appeared among us, not 
so much dying, as translated from the field of his 
earthly labors and honors to a higher sphere. I have 
left myself httle space or strength to add any thing to 
the narrative of his life by way of portraying his char- 
acter. Some attempt, however, of that kind, you will 
expect. 

Mr. Adams was a man of the rarest intellectual en- 
dowments. His perception was singularly accurate 
and penetrating. "Whenever he undertook to investi- 
gate a subject, he was sure to attain the clearest ideas 
of it which its nature admitted. What he knew, he 
knew with great precision. His argumentative powers 
were of the highest order, and admirably trained. 
When he entered the field of controversy, it was a 
strong and a bold man that voluntarily encountered him 
a second time. His memory was wonderful. Every 
thing he had seen or read, every occurrence in his 
long and crowded hfe, was at all times present to his 



67 

recollection. This was the more remarkable, as he 
had, almost from the age of boyhood, followed the 
practice of recording, from day to day, every incident 
of importance, — a practice thought to weaken the 
memory. This wonderful power of recollection was 
aided by the strict method with which he pursued his 
studies for the earlier part of his life, and until weighed 
down by the burdens of executive office, on entering 
the department of state. He had, withal, a diligence 
which nothing could weary. He rose at the earliest 
hour, and had an occupation for every moment of the 
day. 

Without having made a distinct pursuit of any one 
branch of knowledge, he was probably possessed of a 
greater amount and variety of accurate information 
than any other man in the country. It follows, of 
course, that he had pushed his inquiries far beyond 
the profession to which he was bred, or that reading 
which belongs du^ectly to the publicist and the states- 
man. Few among us drank so deeply at the ancient 
fountains. To his acquaintance with the language 
and literature of Greece and Eome, he added the two 
leading languages of continental Europe, of which the 
French was a second mother- tongue. The orations 
of Demosthenes and Cicero, the philosophical and 
rhetorical works of Cicero ; the critical works of Aris- 
totle and Quintilian; the historical works of Taci- 
tus, (all of which he had translated at school;) a con- 
8 



58 

siclerable part of the poems of Ovid, whom he greatly 
admu'ed; the sath'es of Juvenal; m French, Pascal, 
Mohere, and La Fontaine ; in English, Shakespeare, 
his greatest favorite, with Milton, Dryden, Pope, and 
Bm-ke, — ^were stamped upon his memory. These 
were studies which he never wholly sacrificed to the 
calls of business, however urgent. The office of Pres- 
ident of the United States, at least as filled by Mr. 
Adams, is one of extreme labor, but he found time, 
amidst its incessant calls and interruptions, to address 
a series of letters to his youngest son, — some of them, 
written in the busiest period of the session, — contain- 
ing an elaborate analysis of several of the orations of 
Cicero, designed to aid the young man in the perusal 
of this, his favorite author. At the close of one of 
these letters, (as if it were impossible to fill up his 
industrious day,) he adds, that he is reading Evelyn's 
Sylva with great dehght. Some of these letters would 
be thought a good day's work for a scholar by pro- 
fession. But Mr. Adams wrote with a rapidity and 
ease, which would hardly have been suspected from 
his somewhat measured style. Notwithstanding the 
finish of his sentences, they were, like Gibbon's, 
struck off at once, and never had to be retouched. 
I remember that once, as I sat by his side in the 
House of Representatives, I was so much struck 
with the neatness and beauty of the manuscript of 
a report of great length which he had brought into 



59 

the House, and in which, as I turned over the leaves, 
I could not perceive an interlineation, that I made a 
remark to him on the subject. He told me it was the 
first draft, and had never been copied ; and, in that 
condition, it was sent to the press, though sure to be 
the subject of the severest criticism. 

To his profession, Mr. Adams gave but a few years 
of his hfe, and those not exclusively. He had, how- 
ever, mastered the elementary learning and the forms 
of the law, and, in the fourth year after entering upon 
the practice, supported himself by his professional 
earnings. In later hfe, he appeared at the bar, on a 
few important occasions, with distinction and success. 
During his residence in Russia, Mr. Madison made 
him an oflfer of a seat on the Bench of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, which he declined. As a 
public speaker, whether at the senate or the bar, he 
was grave, clear, and impressive, — formidable in retort, 
powerful in invective, — sometimes giving the reins to 
a playful fancy, and, when the subject and occasion 
admitted, vehement and impassioned, — neglectful of 
the lighter graces of manner, but, at all times, rivet- 
ing the attention of his audience. When, at the age 
of seventy-fom', he came into the Supreme Court at 
Washington, as the volunteer counsel of the Africans 
on board the Amistad, he displayed a forensic talent, 
which would have added lustre to the brightest name 
in the profession. 



60 

But it is as a politician, as a statesman, and a chief 
magistrate, that he -will hereafter be chiefly remem- 
bered in the annals of the country ; and it will be 
among those who have served her the longest, the 
most zealously, the most ably, the most conscien- 
tiously. Breathing, as we do, an atmosphere heated 
with the passions of the day ; swayed, as we all are, 
by our own prejudices, it is not for us to sit in judg- 
ment on his political course. Impartiality in our 
opinions of contemporaries is often the name which 
we give to our own adverse conceptions. It is char- 
acteristic of most men, either from temperament or 
education, to lean decidedly either to the conservative 
or progressive tendency, which forms respectively the 
basis of our parties. In Mr. Adams's political system 
there was a singular mixture of both principles. This 
led him, early in his political career, to adopt a course 
which is sanctioned by the highest authorities and 
examples in the country, that of avoiding, as far as 
possible, an intimate and exclusive union with any 
party. This poUcy was studiously pursued by Gen- 
eral Washington. He retained in his cabinet the two 
great rival leaders, as long as they could be prevailed 
upon to sit side by side ; and in appointing ministers 
to Great Biitain and to France, at a very critical period 
of our foreign relations, he acted upon the same 
principle. Mr. Jefferson, in his inaugural address 
in 1801, says, "We have called by different names 



61 

brethren of the same principle. We are all repub- 
Hcans: we are all federahsts ;" and m 1817, Gen- 
eral Jackson exhorted Mr. Monroe to destroy the 
monster, party. It was, I think, on the same prin- 
ciple that Mr. Adams, when the state government 
was organized in 1802, was desu'ous of constituting 
the executive council by a fair representation of the 
two parties. But this poHcy, I suspect, can never 
be effectively pursued, at those periods when it would 
be of any importance, viz., times of high political 
excitement. A real independence of party ties, on 
great questions and in difficult times, will, I fear, 
rai-ely be asserted without great personal sacrifices 
and violent coUisions. Those whose general views 
are in sympathy, if separated on individual measm-es 
of great interest, become, for that veiy reason, the 
more estranged; and the confidence and admiration 
of years are succeeded by alienation and bitterness. 
Burke and Fox, the dearest of friends and the 
ti'ustiest of allies, parted from each other on the 
floor of parhament with tears, but still they parted, 
and forever. Happy the statesman, who, when the 
collisions of the day are past and forgotten, shall pos- 
sess titles to the abiding interest and respect of his 
countr}'men as brilliant and substantial as those of 
Mr. Adams ! 

In the high offices which he filled in the govern- 
ment, he may be safely held up as a model of a pubhc 



62 

serv-ant. As a diplomatist, his rank has been assigned 
by Washington. As an executive officerj the duty of 
the day, however uninviting, was discharged as if it 
were an object of the most attractive interest. The 
most obsolete and complicated claim, if it became 
necessary for Mr. Adams to pass upon it, was sifted 
to the bottom with the mechanical patience of an au- 
ditor of accounts ; and woe to the fallacy, if any there 
were, which lurked in the statement. A " report on 
weights and measures," prepared by Mr. Adams in 
the ordinary routine of official duty, is entitled to the 
character of a scientific treatise. In executing the 
office of President of the United States, he was gov- 
erned by two noble principles, oftener professed than 
carried into full practice. The first related to measures, 
and was an all but superstitious respect for the con- 
stitution and the law. Laboring as he did, by the 
strange perversity of party judgments, under the 
odium of latitudinarian doctrines, there never lived 
the public man, or the magistrate, who carried into 
every act of official duty a deeper sense of the binding 
power of the constitution and the law, as a rule of 
conduct from which there was no appeal. The second 
principle regarded me7i, and was that of conscientious 
impartiahty. I do not mean that he did not confer 
important offices, when the nomination was freely at 
his discretion, on political friends, — the services of 
none others can be commanded for places of high 



63 

trust and confidence, — ^but political friendship never 
was the paramount consideration. He found a ma- 
jority of the offices in the countiy in the possession of 
his political opponents, and he never removed one of 
them to make way for a friend. He invited Mr. 
Crawford, a rival candidate for the presidency, to re- 
tain his seat in the Cabinet as Secretary of the Treas- 
my. He decided a long-standing controversy about 
rank between the highest officers of the army, against 
his political interests. He brought to eveiy ques- 
tion that required his decision, however wrapped up 
in personal considerations, the inflexibility of a judi- 
cial tribunal. 

As a man, he had, no doubt, the infirmities of 
human nature, (fair subjects of criticism to the happy 
few who are immaculate,) but not, I think, those 
most frequently laid to his charge. He was not, for 
instance, parsimonious or avaricious. Thrown, from 
his first start in life, upon his own resources, he 
determined to live within his means, and studied a 
decent economy; not because he loved money, but 
because he loved independence. That object at- 
tained, he ceased to exercise even ordinary thrift in the 
management of his affairs ; but he did not cease, to the 
end of his life, to lend an ear to every call, (pubhc or 
private,) upon his liberality, far beyond the extent of 
his income. He did not, as a minister abroad, load 
himself with debt, that he might enjoy the satisfac- 



64 

tion of being distanced in a race of profusion with 
the foreign ambassadors, whose princely incomes are 
swelled by princely salaries; but, from the time of 
his first residence at Washington, as Secretary of 
State, to the close of his presidency, and even of his 
life, the hospitahty of his house and of his table was 
proverbial. Neither office, I believe, added a dollar to 
his fortune. He was plain in his personal habits and 
dress, because he was simple in his tastes and feel- 
ings. What attraction can there be to a thoughtful, 
studious man, — ^\ith great affairs upon his hands and 
upon his thoughts, — in the wretched and fatiguing 
vanities which are the principal sources of expense ? 
There was an occasional abstraction and reserve in 
his manner, which led those who did not observe 
him more closely, to think him deficient in warmth 
and cordiality. But, while he wanted a certain cheer- 
ful flexibility and sprighthness, which, when accom- 
panied with sincerity and frankness, are a very envi- 
able endowment for a public man, — eminently useful 
in making friends, — yet, in real kindness of nature, 
and depth and tenderness of feeling, no man sur- 
passed him. His venerable classmate bears witness 
that he contributed his full share to the hilarity of 
the social circle ; and sure I am there must be around 
me some who can remember with me the hours, for 
which they have hung dehghted on the fascination 
of his social converse. As far as the higher sym- 



65 

pathies of our nature are concerned, — the master 
affections, whose sphere is far above the httle con- 
ventional courtesies of Hfe, — a warmer spirit never 
dwelt in a human frame. 

But I have left untouched the great qualities of 
the man, the traits which formed the heroism of his 
character, and would have made him, at all times, 
and in any career, a person of the highest mark and 
force. These were, his lion-heart, which knew not 
the fear of man ; and his rehgious spirit, which feared 
God in all things, constantly, profoundly, and practi- 
cally. A person of truer courage, physical and moral, 
I think never lived. In whatever calling of life he 
had grown up, this trait, I am sure, would have been 
conspicuous. Had he been a common sailor, he 
would have been the first to go to the mast-head, 
when the topsails were flying into ribbons. He never 
was called to expose his life in the field ; but, had his 
duty required it, he was a man to lead a forlorn hope, 
with a steady step, through a breach spouting with 
fire. It was his custom, — at a time when personal 
violence toward individuals politically obnoxious was 
not uncommon, — to walk the unwatched and desolate 
streets of Washington alone, and before sun-rise. 
This may be set down to the steadiness of nerves, 
which is shared by men of inferior tone of mind. 
But in his place in the House of Representatives, — 
in the great struggle into which he plunged, from 

9 



66 

a conscientious sense of duty, in the closing years of 
his Ufe, — and in the boldness and resolution with 
which he trod on ground never before thrown open to 
free discussion, he evinced a moral courage, founded 
on the only true basis of moral principle, of which I 
know no brighter example. It was with this he warred, 
and with this he conquered ; strong in the soundness of 
his honest heart, strong in the fear of God, — the last 
great dominant principle of his life and chai'acter. 

There was the hiding of his power. There it was 
that he exhibited, in its true type, the sterling quality 
of the good old stock of which he came. Offices, 
and affairs, and honors, and studies, left room in his 
soul for Faith. No man laid hold, with a firmer grasp, 
of the realities of Hfe ; but no man dwelt more steadily 
on the mysterious realities beyond life. He enter- 
tained a profound, I had almost said an obsolete, rev- 
erence for sacred things. The daily and systematic 
perusal of the Bible was an occupation with which no 
other duty was allowed to interfere. He attended the 
public offices of social worship with a constancy sel- 
dom witnessed in this busy and philosophic age. Still 
there was nothing austere or narrow-minded in his 
religion ; there was no affectation of rigor in his hfe 
or manners ; no unreflecting adoption of traditionary 
opinions in matters of behef. He remained, to the 
end of his days, an inquirer after truth. He regu- 
arly attended the pubhc worship of churches widely 



67 

diflfering from each other in doctrinal pecuharities. 
The daily entry of his journal, for the latter part of 
his life, begins with a passage extracted from Scrip- 
ture, followed with his own meditation and commen- 
tary ; and, thus commencing the day, there is little 
reason to doubt that, of his habitual reflections, as 
large a portion was thrown forward to the world of 
spirits, as was retained by the passing scene. 

The death of such a man is no subject of vulgar 
sorrow. Domestic affliction itself bows with resig- 
nation at an event so mature in its season ; so rich 
in its consolations ; so raised into sublimity by the 
grandeur of the parting scene. Of all the great ora- 
tors and statesmen in the world, he alone has, I think, 
lived out the full term of a long life in actual service, 
and died on the field of duty, in the pubhc eye, within 
the halls of pubhc council. The great majority of 
public men, who most resemble him, drop away satis- 
fied, perhaps disgusted, as years begin to wane ; many 
break down at the meridian ; in other times and coun- 
tries, not a few have laid their heads on the block. 
Demosthenes, at the age of sixty, swallowed poison, 
while the pursuer was knocking at the door of the 
temple m which he had taken refuge. Cicero, at the 
age of sixty-four, stretched out his neck from his lit- 
ter to the hired assassin. Our illustrious fellow- 
citizen, in the fulness of his years and of his honors, 
upon a day that was shaking, in Europe, the piUars 



68 

of a monarchy to the dust, fell calmly at his post, 
amidst venerating associates, and breathed his last 
within the Capitol : 

" And, which is best and happiest yet, all this 
With God not parted from him, — 
But favoring and assisting to the end. 
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail, 
Or knock the breast ; no weakness, no contempt. 
Dispraise or blame, — nothing but well and fair. 
And what may quiet us, in a death so noble." 



69 



The following is the Oeder of the Services on occasion of the Delivery of the 

foeegoing eulogy. 



(JTommontDcaUl) of illassacl)nsctts. 



ORDER OP SERVICES 



AT 



FANEUIL HALL, SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1848, 



AS A TESTDttONX OF RESPECT TO THE MEMORY OF 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 

BY THE 



LEGISLATUKE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



Voluntary, by the Orchestra. 

n. 

Solemn Chant, by the Choir. 

1. Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord : that delighteth greatly in 

his commandments. 

2. Unto the upright there arise th light in darkness : the righteous shall 

be held in everlasting remembrance. 

3. The hope of the ungodly is like dust that is blown away by the 

wind: like the smoke which is dispersed here and there by a 
tempest : 



70 

4. And passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a 

day. 

5. But the righteous live forevermore : their reward also is with the 

Lord, and the care of them is with the Most High. 

6. Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom and a beautiful 

crown from the Lord's hand : for with his right hand shall he 
cover them, and with his arm shall he protect them. 

7. The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment 

shall touch them : in the sight of the unwise they seem to die, 
and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us to 
be utter destruction. 

8. But they are in peace : for though they be punished in the sight of 

men, 

9. Yet is their hope fuU of immortaUty : and having been a little chas- 

tised, they shall be greatly rewarded. 

10. For God hath proved them, and found them worthy for himself: and 

they shall judge the nations, and their Lord shall reign forever. 

11. I heard a voice from heaven, saying. Blessed are the dead which die 

in the Lord : yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their 
labors, and their works do foUow them. 



'J 



m. 

Prayer, by the Rev. C. A. Bartol, 

CHAPLAIN OF THE SENATE. 

IV. 
Hymn. — Tune, "Savannah." 

O what is Man, great Maker of Mankind, 
That thou to him so great respect dost bear ! 

That thou adom'st him vidth so great a mind, 
Mak'st him a king and e'en an angel's peer. 

what a lively life, what heavenly power. 
What spreading virtue, what a sparkling fire, 

How great, how plentiful, how rich a dower. 
Dost Thou withm this djdng flesh inspire ! 






71 



Thou hast not given these blessings for a day, 
Nor made them on the body's hfe depend ; 

The soul, though made in time, survives for aye, 
And, though it hath beginning, sees no end. 

Heaven waxeth old, and all the spheres above 
Shall one day faint, and their svi^ift motion stay ; 

And time itself, in time, shall cease to move. 
Only the soul survives and lives for aye. 

Cast down thyself then, Man, and strive to raise 
The glory of thy Maker's sacred name ; 

Use all thy powers, that blessed Power to praise. 
Which gives thee power to be, and use the same. 



Eulogy, by the Hon. Edward Everett. 



VI. 

Air and Chorus, from Handel's " Messiah." 

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter 
day upon the earth : and though worms destroy this body, yet in my 
flesh shall I see God. For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first 
fruits of them that sleep. 

Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the 
dead : For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. 



THE MUSIC WAS PERFORMED BY THE HANDEL AND HAYDN SOCIETY. 



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